I've been having semi-lucid dreams for years, been finding out how to exert more control on my own for the most part. Last night, I was dreaming and realized almost instantly that I was in a dream; the day before I'd read an article which the writer described the spinning technique so I figured I'd give it a shot. So I started spinning, but as I kept spinning the dream went completely black. All of the characters and the environment and everything in the dream was gone. I also lost sight of my avatar which is extremely rare for me as that usually stays very consistent during my dreams. I stopped spinning and immediately thought "fly", so I started flying but the problem of the dream being dark was still there. I felt like I was flying but I couldn't see myself doing it and I couldn't feel the dream state as I usually do. In addition, spinning made me actually feel very dizzy.

Eventually I stopped flying and went back to the previous dream, things started to fill in a bit more so I figured I'd add a few things. I threw in Pamela Anderson and the Mad Hatter etc, but every time I added something parts of the dream went black again. Eventually, I got tired and the dream going black constantly started to freak me out so I went back to the normal dream and decided to just do what I usually do: enjoy the boundaries of the dream while exerting my own control of the situation.

I don't know if that is normally considered lucidity, what I've been doing in my dreams is exerting influence over where the dream goes or sometimes I'll just talk to the characters in the dream about themselves and analyze their makeup or whatever. Is it normal to feel dizzy or for parts of the dream to go black when you find yourself in a state of control? I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I'll keep trying, just not sure if I did something wrong or not.